Dark Hollow eBook

Surprised, almost touched, she held out her hand,
with a cordial thankyou, in which emotion
struggled with her desire to preserve an appearance
of complete confidence in Judge Ostrander, and incidentally
in his son. Then, being on her feet by this time,
she turned to go, anxious to escape further embarrassment
from a perspicacity she no longer possessed the courage
to meet.

The lawyer appeared to acquiesce in the movement of
departure. But when he saw her about to vanish
through the door, some impulse of compunction, as
real as it was surprising, led him to call her back
and seat her once more in the chair she had so lately
left.

“I cannot let you go,” said he, “until
you understand that these insinuations from a self-called
witness would not be worth our attention if there
were not a few facts to give colour to his wild claims.
Oliver Ostrander was in that ravine connecting
with Dark Hollow, very near the time of the onslaught
on Mr. Etheridge; and he certainly hated the man and
wanted him out of the way. The whole town knows
that, with one exception. You know that exception?”

“I think so,” she acceded, taking a fresh
grip upon her emotions.

“That this was anything more than a coincidence
has never been questioned. He was not even summoned
as a witness. With the judge’s high reputation
in mind I do not think a single person could have
been found in those days to suggest any possible connection
between this boy and a crime so obviously premeditated.
But people’s minds change with time and events,
and Oliver Ostrander’s name uttered in this
connection to-day would not occasion the same shock
to the community as it would have done then.
You understand me, Mrs. Scoville?”

“You allude to the unexplained separation between
himself and father, and not to any failure on his
part to sustain the reputation of his family?”

“Oh, he has made a good position for himself,
and earned universal consideration. But that
doesn’t weigh against the prejudices of people,
roused by such eccentricities as have distinguished
the conduct of these two men.”

“Alas!” she murmured, frightened to the
soul for the first time, both by his manner and his
words.

“You know and I know,” he went on with
a grimness possibly suggested by his subject, “that
no mere whim lies back of such a preposterous seclusion
as that of Judge Ostrander behind his double fence.
Sons do not cut loose from fathers or fathers from
sons without good cause. You can see, then, that
the peculiarities of their mutual history form but
a poor foundation for any light refutation of this
scandal, should it reach the public mind. Judge
Ostrander knows this, and you know that he knows this;
hence your distress. Have I not read your mind,
madam?”

“No one can read my mind any more than they
can read Judge Ostrander’s,” she avowed
in a last desperate attempt to preserve her secret.
“You may think you have done so, but what assurance
can you have of the fact?”